by John Lawrence / Will Blog for Food / November 27, 2010
Republicans are set to throw sand in the gears of everything Obama attempts to do to make the US and the world a better place. From DeMint saying that, if they could defeat him on health care, it would break him, it would be his Waterloo, to McConnell saying it was his main goal in the next two years to see that Obama would not get reelected. They are out to degrade and discredit Obama in every way they possibly can. From Jon Kyl blocking the START treaty to shutting down the government over the debt ceiling, they’ve made it clear there is no price that they will make others pay that is too high.
And they have their phalanx of right wing talk show hosts and Fox News who are pouring gasoline on the flames. They have capitalized on anger and made it the base of their appeal to the masses. The aggrieved masses are reacting in the same way the Germans did in the 1930s when a madman capitalized on their anger to catapult himself into power. There is no issue so benign that the Republicans won’t seek to trash it rather than give Obama an ostensible victory. They cast aspersions on him at every opportunity. Their goal is to turn him into a screaming meemie, an angry black man foaming at the mouth. There is no trick too dirty to play on him. They will use every political tool available to act in the worst interests of Obama – and the US and the world be damned.
Middle class tax cuts. You want middle class tax cuts? Then you must give tax cuts to the rich even though that would produce no economic benefits and would add $700 billion to the debt. But, hey, the rich could step up to the plate and buy a few more vacation homes thus alleviating the real estate market and providing construction jobs. Or they could buy another Lear jet. You want to reduce the debt? Not on the backs of the rich you won’t as long as the right wing Republicans and Tea Baggers have anything to do with it. In America, where never is heard a nondisparaging word about Obama, Republicans are content to produce a Gotterdammerung pulling themselves, the US and the whole world down with them if they don’t get their way.
They will castigate Obama in every conceivable way. They will tie him down like the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver. They will seek his death by a thousand cuts. When one of them flames out, another will arise to whiplash him. What legislation they can’t kill, they will delay. They are licking their chops savoring the day when they assume complete power. Although Democrats still control the Senate and the Presidency, Republicans act like they are running the whole show. They are playing chicken with Obama and the American people because they have enough Americans in their camp who have been whipped into a frenzy by right wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. And their campaigns are fueled by right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers. They have enough demagogues to sabotage every issue. They have a movement behind them – the Tea Baggers. Where is the movement on the left? There isn’t any. Where is the wind beneath Obama’s sails? There isn’t any.
Forget unemployment insurance, food stamps, anything to do with the unfortunate souls who have lost their homes and their 401ks. Those folks will end up on the streets dependent on charity for the rest of their lives. The rest will hang on by their teeth in debt peonange for the rest of their lives. Republicans have vowed to dismantle any and all programs which might benefit the poor or the unemployed. Expect unemployment to surge until the Republicans obtain enough power to redefine unemployment and make 25% unemployment the new normal. They will just redefine it in such a way that 25% unemployment will turn into an official 5%, and then everyone will go about their business as if nothing ever happened until the next financial catastrophe requiring a massive government bailout. The simplest way to redefine unemployment is to just limit the official number of unemployed to those currently on unemployment insurance and then reduce the length of time that they will be able to collect. Presto, we have reduced unemployment to 5% or even less! Welcome to the Brave New World where Republican compassion is an oxymoron!
The Republicans will seek deficit reduction by cutting or eliminating every social program that benefits the middle class like social security and Medicare. But they will extend even more tax cuts to the rich under the mantra that that will improve the economy, a theory that has proven to be totally false. In the 1960s there was a left wing movement, primarily an anti-war movement, but did that movement put elected members in Congress the way the Tea Party has done? No, they marched, they demonstrated, but they were politically ineffective because they didn’t have talk radio and Fox News behind them. Today the Tea Party has something approaching real political power. Their business is to constantly pound Obama day after day beseiging him by denigrating him and everything he stands for. It doesn’t matter how many lies they have to tell. No matter that Obama is a moderate centrist, they call him a far left socialist. It doesn’t matter how many poor people they have to sacrifice on the altar of their own political power aspirations. Millions have been set aside for Haiti relief only to be tied up by one Republican, Tom Coburn. When one man can defeat the will of the people and cause misery for millions of people, American democracy is at a standstill if it hasn’t already gone into reverse.
Obama and the Democrats need to play hardball with the Republicans because what the Republicans are doing is beyond hardball. They are using every dirty trick they can think of to denounce, denigrate, castigate and assassinate the character of the President of the US. The fate of the American people lies in the balance. What amounts to an angry mob has been whipped up by the right wing.
Fox News headlines “Democrats Fail to Extend Unemployment Benefits” rather than “Republicans Vote Not to Extend Unemployment Benefits.” Or Democrats Fail to Pass Tax Cuts for Middle Class. Yeah, because all Republcans voted against tax cuts for the middle class. Democrats fail to do anything. Yeah, because Republicans vote against anything Democrats try to do. It’s all in the spin. Republicans don’t want to give Obama or the Democrats any credit for anything, but they will give them credit for their failure to do anything, a failure that results from Republican determination not to let them get anything done.
Saturday Night Live did a skit about a press conference by Premeir Hu of China at one mike with an interpreter and Obama at the other. As Hu mumbled in pseudo Chinese, an interpreter standing behind him enunciated the English. Hu expressed increased frustration at Obama’s chiding. It seemed Obama thought his role was to tell the Chinese everythting that was wrong with them and to tell Hu what he must do to please the Americans. As Hu got increasingly fed up with Obama’s demands, his voice rose and he said, “Are you going to take me out to dinner first?” Obama was like, “Who? What the …?” And Hu says, “I like to be taken out to dinner first before someone does sex to me!” Then he bends over and backs towards Obama. Obama demurs. This goes on for a few more rounds before they announce, “LIVE FROM NEW YORK. IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT.”
SNL could revise this skit slightly with Obama playing Hu’s role and House majority leader John Boner [sic] playing the role of Obama. As Obama tries to get Boner to compromise for the good of the American people, finally in desperation he says, “Are you going to take me to the movies first?”
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Well with that magic bullet the GOP has chambered for 2012 named Sarah Palin, their excitement overshadows the fact that they’ve got the gun aimed squarely at their big toe.
That’s why they are the party of NO. NO ideas, NO inspiration, NO clue. Same old crap, different day.
Wow, the party out of power is in opposition to the President….Stop The Presses!
The election in November showed it is the public who is saying NO to bigger government, NO to government health care, and NO to higher taxes.
RB – that was a mouthful. Have to disagree wid ya tho, buddy. Current polls still show the majority of Americans want the health care reforms enacted. How can two Republican candidates – Whitman and Fiorina – who together spent what about $230 million in their unsuccessful campaigns to purchase electoral seats – be seen as part of efforts for a smaller government? Sure, the electorate didn’t want to spend any monies – so every proposition that asked the public to spend went down to defeat.
However, the point of the article is that the Republican leadership is not showing any signs of compromise or willingness to work with the other main party in a two-party system. This is way out of line and not the usual stance of the party in opposition.
Frank- Yes, the public does want health care reform. They want cost containment. and they want to keep their own doctor . But the public never ask for a raid on Medicare funds, insurance mandates on individuals, 1099 forms on small employers, new IRS agents, and special op-outs for many businesses. I did not get one campaign flier reminding me of this health care success.
As for the point of the article and your comment about compromise or a willingness to work together, it is not just one party responsible for our current failures . It is both parties and both extremes that prevents good governance.
RB, sorry, but I don’t paint both major parties with the same brush or with the same amount of paint. It is true that the Democratic Party is responsible for a lot of what is messed up in this country, but in terms of where we are today, they both are not equally responsible. There’s qualitative and quantitative differences. Obama tried to compromise with the Repubnuts for the first 2 years – much to the chagrin of many progressives and leftists – we saw him as bending over backwards (or is it frontwards?) in efforts to get the GOP to work with him on health care, jobs, and other issues and policies. The right-wing party became “the Party of ‘No'”, didn’t they? And now with the ascendancy of an extreme racist element trying to take over the Republicans, so-called mainstream GOP leaders while placating this extremist wing and trying to co-opt it at the same moment, have turned their backs on the prez – declaring that their main goal was to prevent Obama from having a second term.
Let’s call them Conservatives and Progressives instead of Republicans and Democrats. Conservatives have always blocked those issues that might make this nation better, be it railroads or votes for women or the Emancipation Proclamation.
They have worked to destroy FDR’s New Deal ever since that came in. Starvation was a daily worry for millions in this country then. I talked to a woman on Thanksgiving whose family were so poor during the depression, she still suffers from the effects of Rickets. That was Columbus, Ohio! White people!
We still have areas In This Nation that suffer deprivation in nutrition, education, opportunity, etc. That’s what smaller government does. Smaller government means privatization with costs so high the poorer people die. Is that what we want? Smaller government being our Masters?
Sure, we have some waste and we have some lower level crooks that get away with crimes like cheating the medicare and welfare programs. I know two women who have worked many years for the Welfare program in California and they Despise the poor beggars they deal with. We sure don’t want them to have a job, now do we?
So then we want BIG government being our Masters? The way it’s going we are going to have the Chinese as our masters so it’s all a moot point.
Smaller government is a code word for privatizing everything that has an elected representative we can hold accountable. It is used by people who don’t like democracy. Is that what you mean to convey?
Did anyone hear David Stockman on Fareed Zakaria’s show on CNN this a.m.?
He was the one who said “trickle down doesn’t work” when he was in the Reagan administration.
He talked about the Republicans being off-base on the tax issue, and that less
spending AND tax increases have to occur. He gave the stats about how very wealthy are worth 40x more now in trillions of dollars than in 1980, and that W should not have bailed out the banks. Do we really think that the current Republicans will listen
and try to compromise on that issue? I sure don’t.
It’s been clear to me that the general public has been listening to too much talk radio (Limbaugh, etc) and FOX commentators (Beck, etc.) who are on hours 5 days a wk., and buying into the rhetoric/opinions of those mouths, who say things without backup. There are not enough Dems on the airwaves to counteract the ridiculous things being said.
I am convinced that based on what Republicans have said so far, they will fight the Obama administration on every issue he wants to address. Frank’s comments are right on.
While continued hostile behavior from both sides is possible, one only needs to look at how Bill Clinton succeeded with compromise and leadership. I hope the President rejects both party’s extreme elements and follows the Clinton model to move forward down the center.
Unfortunatly, the President has no one to blame but himself for the mess now.
He abandoned his campaign promise immediatly, remember “Change” – & became just another tool for the the Wall Street Banksters who created this disaster, along with another lawyer – self-serving posterboy WJ Clinton.
Lawyers know one thing for sure – the one paying their bills is “right” – no matter how wrong they really are.
Too bad – Obama’s “campaign retoric” sounded better than most.
TJ – you are too quick to blame “lawyers” for all our ills. How about blaming right-wing, extremists and blue dog Democrats, and the military industrial complex and the extremist right wing Supreme Court, and all the corporations who suck money out of this country and its peeps. Afterall, lawyers wrote the Constitution, much of the Bill of Rights, Ghandi was a lawyer, so were many of the activists during the Sixties and Seventies, and to this day – ever heard of the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, the Southern Poverty Law Center for starters?
Frank, thanks for your comments to tj; as usual you’re right on.
Well if he actually had a pair then it wouldn’t be so easy for the repubs to make him their biatch. Agree or disagree with him, you have to admit he is a whiny little man.